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Reverend Trask
: This article is about Reverend Trask from the 1795 storyline. For the 1897 character, see Gregory Trask. Reverend Orville Vilorus Trask (1760s - 1795) was a witch-hunter from Salem, Massachusetts. Trask had a reputation for persecuting innocent girls and sending them to the gallows as witches. He was brought to Collinsport by Abigail Collins to exorcise the estate of a witch, Victoria Winters (385). His passion for the case eventually resulted in Victoria being wrongly found guilty (437) and sentenced to death by hanging. Trask was also responsible for blackmailing Nathan Forbes into testifying against her in trial. He later confessed his error (441) and wrote a letter to this fact before being immured in a supporting basement wall in The Old House by the newly risen vampire, Barnabas Collins (442). The letter was dismissed by the court as inadmissible evidence. Rev. Trask was the father of Lamar Trask, an undertaker who lived in the 1840s. Lamar was trying to get revenge for the disappearance of his father. Through Lamar, he was the grandfather of Elias Trask, who lived in the 1860s. He was the great-grandfather of Gregory Trask, a cruel preacher and educator who died in 1897. Rev. Trask was also, in all probability, the ancestor of Tony Peterson, a lawyer who lived in the 1960s and '70s. In 1968, Professor Stokes, Julia Hoffman, and Tony Peterson held a seance to summon Trask's ghost (510) so he could exact revenge on Angelique (who was masquerading as Cassandra Collins, wife of Roger Collins), reasoning that since she was the real witch and she had deceived him into persecuting Victoria Winters, and she was the one who made Barnabas a vampire, she was more responsible than he for Trask's death. Trask tried to get revenge on Barnabas for killing him in 1795. He started to wall up Barnabas in the same space he was in for 173 years. Trask also summoned all of Barnabas' victims from the past for a mock trial. Barnabas was found guilty and he was walled up. Dr. Julia Hoffman and Willie Loomis saved Barnabas. The shade of Rev. Trask destroyed Angelique (519) by performing the same rite of exorcism on her that he had performed on Victoria Winters in 1795 (385). This was undone when Nicholas Blair came to Collinsport (521) posing as Cassandra's brother and resurrected her (526). Nicholas used his powers to summon Rev. Trask's ghost to extract information about Barnabas Collins (523). At first, Trask refused, but had no choice when Nicholas threatened to force Trask to spend eternity wandering without being able to return to his grave. The ghost of Reverend Trask also appeared to Victoria Winters and Jeff Clark. Jeff was the reincarnation of Peter Bradford, the lawyer that defended Victoria in her trial for witchcraft. Jeff recognized Trask and Victoria believed that to be proof that Jeff was Peter. Rev. Gregory Trask told Barnabas Collins that he was the great-grandson of the Rev. Trask who travelled from Salem to Collinsport in the late 1790s and disappeared mysteriously on his way home (725). Later Barnabas admitted to Gregory Trask that he killed his great-grandfather at the Old House and vowed to Gregory that he would meet a similar fate, which he did. Notes Reverend Trask's first name was never revealed, although Jerry Lacy jokingly refers to him as "Orville." In Bloodline, Rev. Trask's full name is revealed to be Orville Vilorus Trask. Source Material Reverend Trask's death was based on the death of Fortunato in Edgar Allan Poe's The Cask of Amontillado. Appearances 385, 386, 387, 388, 400, 412, 427, 429, 432, 433, 434, 435, 437, 438, 440, 441, 442, 511, 512, 516, 519, 523, 1126 Audio Appearances Bloodline Category:1795 Characters Category:Characters Category:Ghosts Category:Trask family